Mapping Traumatized Bodies and Territories in Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann: An Adventure

ABSTRACT

Doris Lessing’s novel, Mara and Dann: An Adventure reflects a multi-layered exploration of trauma’s enduring impact on both individuals and their environments. In Lessing’s novel, the shattered world left by the apocalypse continues to breed a multitude of traumas: war, violence, discrimination, and the enduring wounds of inequality. This article explores how the novel employs space as a tool to create a powerful metaphor, where both physical landscapes and the body serve as maps representing profound traumas. Drawing on theories of trauma and postcolonial ecocriticism and inspired by the idea that the novel is an “epistemological narrative form” (Tally, 11), that “projects, describes, and figuratively maps the social spaces” (96), this article examines how Lessing utilizes spatial imagination to enable the characters in her novel, particularly the protagonist Mara, to create new maps: physical, mental, and social. These maps enable them to bear witness to the past traumas of land annihilation and cultural loss, as well as the present traumas of bodily violation, ultimately providing a context for trauma resilience. Lessing’s spatial stance ultimately seeks to empower marginalized groups and open pathways for realizing untapped potentials in African narratives.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Reza Negarestani and Nick Land elaborate on the concept of geotrauma as a concept that “helps us to rethink the relation between the human and non-human by embracing a notion of violence reducible to neither side of that division” (in Matts and Tynan, p.95).

2. A concept developed by Lee Edelman in his book, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.

3. The siblings belong to the royal family of Mahondi and their real names are Princess Shahana (Mara) and Prince Shahmand (Dann).

4. The available academic research on this topic is not adequate. However, in his article “Sibling Incest in the Royal Families of Egypt, Peru, and Hawaii,” Ray. H. Bixler claims that sibling marriages of royal families were common during “the Ptolemaic” period.

5. Mara first met General Shabis, the head of the Agre army, in Charad. He had a kind attitude toward Mara and taught her native language. They also exchanged knowledge about the past.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Selin Şencan

Selin Şencan received her Ph.D. degree in English literature from Ege University in Türkiye and is currently an assistant professor at English Department, Izmir Democracy University. Her primary research interests include trauma studies, posthumanism, postcolonialism, cartography and spatial studies, cli-fi and Anthropocene literature.